


Let’s Make a List of All the Things the World Has Put You Through

by theshipsfirstmate



Series: Things Happen [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, and kissing, blackvibe, less boozy this time, more coffee, post-4x09 fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 12:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5743504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follow-up to "Behold the Magnetism Between Two Dead Ends."</p><p>Cisco and Laurel meet again, at the same dive bar, on the night Felicity gets shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let’s Make a List of All the Things the World Has Put You Through

_Follow-up to[Behold the Magnetism Between Two Dead Ends](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5391986), but stands alone. Title from “[Things Happen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNpSpMMfQis)” by Dawes._

**Let’s Make a List of All the Things the World Has Put You Through**

The next time he finds himself at that dive bar, it’s the night Barry races back to S.T.A.R. Labs with a pallor on his face and tears in his eyes. It takes them five tries to get him speaking slowly enough to understand.

Felicity. Shot. _Bad_.

That was all that had come out the first time, and it was enough to startle Caitlin into making a sound that was part gasp, part whimper. She’s on a train for Star City within the hour, and Cisco feels like he’s idling, because they can’t _all_ go – someone’s got to stay here and help Barry with Zoom – but knowing one member of his extended family is hurt has him feeling phantom pains, deep in his chest.

Felicity. Shot.   _Bad_.

Cisco has known, at the very _least_ , three superheroes who have been enamored with Felicity Smoak – loved her with something fiercer than admiration – and while he doesn’t count himself among those numbers, it’s not like he doesn’t see their point. She’s kind and beautiful and most of all brilliant, he hates to think where either of their teams might be without her.

So it feels like as good a night as any to get roaring drunk, because the people he holds closest, the ones who live with him in this crazy little bubble of a second life, they’re the best people he knows. And so often, the absolute worst things happen to them.

There’s a special kind of self-loathing in it too, if he’s honest, whenever something like this goes down. Maybe if his powers were stronger, maybe if he had a better handle on the Vibe ability, maybe he’d be able to see these things before they happen. Maybe he’d be able to save someone.

Instead, he makes his way to that bar, craving the happy, albeit fuzzy, memory of the night he had met two Canaries at once, and, like fate’s listening to his inner monologue, there sits Laurel Lance at his corner of the battered bartop, seemingly lost in thought.

His stomach drops when he sees a tumbler of amber liquid in front of her, and he approaches as cautiously as he can. He’s always too quick to drop his guard around her, and if he needs to get her out of here, or get her help, he needs to be as level-headed as possible.

“This isn’t exactly a gin joint,” he offers as an opening line, internally slapping himself almost immediately. Laurel Lance never fails to make him feel like his shoelaces are tied together.

“Hmm?” She gasps aloud when she turns to see it’s him – maybe there’s some chance she missed his intro – and shoots her hand out to grab onto his atop the laminated wood. She releases it almost immediately, along with a breath, but he can feel the sear of her skin against his long after she lets go. “Cisco.”

“Hey, I was just saying, I’m uh…surprised to see you here.”

“Right.” The tiniest flicker of a smile flashes across her face as she nods, and it feels like a victory. _“Play it once, Sam, for old time’s sake.”_

He shouldn’t let her astonish him like that anymore, but he truly can’t help it. Tonight, they’re rubbed raw, her even more than him it seems, and everything feels like a live wire. Also, he definitely shouldn’t want to kiss her as much as he does. “How’s Felicity doing?” At the same time, it all makes complete sense. 

“I don’t…” She shakes her head, then drops it, fishing her phone out of her pocket. “I have to text them, I meant to…”

He can smell the smokiness of the scotch from where he sits, but she doesn’t seem drunk, just frantic, haunted, and a little bit blind, like she can’t really seem him in front of her. Her eyes dart anywhere but his, until he reaches across the bartop and takes her hand, for real this time. “Laurel, what are you doing here?”

“I just…I dropped Thea off at the emergency room. I mean, I went in, but I…” She bolted, and in her next haunted breath, as her hand tenses in his but doesn’t pull away, she’ll tell him why.  “There’s nothing to do for a while but wait, and watch Oliver slowly go insane…”

Cisco can’t even imagine how this must be tearing at the man he’s only recently seen smile for the first time. Oliver’s had so much light taken from his life, to have Felicity’s flickering low must tear at his very soul in a way that seems unsurvivable. From the look on Laurel’s face, she’s not fairing much better.

“I just, I wanted to see Sara, all of a sudden,” she whispers, and that’s when the final piece fits into the puzzle. His heart splits clean in half for her, and his hand gives hers a little squeeze that he can’t quite help. “It was better than waiting, I thought I’d stay the night, maybe she might even come back with me. Sara loved Felicity.”

“Past tense?”

“She’s gone,” Laurel chokes out, and they both suck in a breath at the unconscious double meaning, the one they’re praying won’t come true. Through the fog of his grief, he vaguely remembers Ray Palmer mentioning something about the other Lance sister in his last email. “Sara’s gone again. Off on her mission through space and time and whatever else.”

“Laurel, I’m sorry.”  She’s told him enough of her own story for him to know that this isn’t one loss too many. She hit that threshold years ago, it’s what first drove her over the edge.

Tonight though, he notices that the glass in front of her is full, layered and sweaty like it’s just been sitting there while the ice melted.

“My mom’s not even here,” she continues with a bitter laugh. “She’s off in England, with some new doctor of hers.”

He almost positive she’s simply spent her time on the barstool tonight picking the soaked coaster into minuscule pieces, but for her sake, he needs to be sure. “Are you drinking?”

“Thinking real hard about it.” She spits out the honest answer and takes in a shuddering breath, closing her eyes tight, like the truth physically hurts. “Thinking like this feels like the kind of night where people like me talk themselves into it.”

Without thinking, Cisco grabs the lowball glass and downs the whole thing in one gulp. He comes up choking, both on the scotch burn, and the scene that flashes quick before his eyes when his fingers brush against hers.

“Whoa, you okay there, buddy?”

“I’m good, it’s fine,” he sputters, but she’s smiling again, just faintly, and he knows he’d do it over and over. “Just, can you maybe be thinking about tequila or vodka next?”

Her eyes soften a little at “next.” Again, it feels like progress.

“I’m not even a scotch girl,” she admits quietly, turning back to the bar as he sets the empty glass down in front of her. “It’s my dad’s drink. Well, his old drink.”

“Right, your dad,” he remembers, head already going a little fuzzy, throat still on fire. With his free hand, he motions to the bartender for a glass of water. “He helping with the…Felicity thing?”

“He’s taking care of his new girlfriend.” That makes little sense, until it does. “Felicity’s mother.”

“ _Mierda_.”

Her father is dating the mother of her friend who just got engaged to her ex-boyfriend. Plus, her twice-reborn baby sister might literally be in the 1970s right now. No wonder she’s a little complicated. No wonder she was facing down a glass of whiskey like it was a standoff.

The need to keep helping her emboldens him a little. Okay, a lot. “You wanna get out of here?”

She turns to him and her face looks surprised, and something else, for a moment. Then it drops. “I should get back to Star City,” she sighs. “There’s nothing for me here.”

It’s not a rejection, not really, but it stings just the same. When it fades, all that’s left is a dull ache for Laurel and the comfort she was hoping to find. He wants to give her that, wants to light up that smile he remembers seeing for the first time in the police precinct, what feels like lifetimes ago.

“Drop me at home?” he offers more than asks. “I took an Uber, I was planning on getting pretty drunk.”

“You shouldn’t drink alone, Cisco.” It’s a joke, but also it isn’t. Not the way she tells it.

“Well, I don’t want to drink with you, Canary.” He tosses a twenty on the bartop – ignores her protests with a haughty “I _drank_ it” – happy to tip more than fifty percent if it means they can leave now. She shouldn’t be here. Not in this city, not in this state of mind, but especially not in this bar. “C’mon, let’s go.”

She does drive him home, even though he tries to give her an out when they reach the parking lot, protesting that he can take a car if she wants to hit the road. He’s relieved when she insists, and then, it’s deja vu, except this time he’s present, which complicates things. He can’t remember if he gave her directions last time, but she doesn’t ask once, just knowingly navigates the route, and he can’t quite parse if that might mean anything.

Then, by fate or maybe just luck, when there’s a space open in front of his building, she takes it, pulling in and parking her car without a word.

“Cup of coffee for the drive back?” he asks as she kills the engine. It might be the smoothest he’s ever been in his life, and he’s nothing short of thrilled when it pays off.

“That’d be nice.”

Laurel’s quiet when they get in the elevator, though, and it takes him a second to remember why. Then he can’t stop remembering. 

He was wasted last time, but the sense memories now are clear and brutal, like a jump scare in a thriller. Her lips, soft against his, her hair threading silky through his fingers, the little noise she made in the back of her throat when he pressed her against the wall of the lift, how long she had let herself kiss him back before pushing him away.

He tries to stop his eyes from flitting to hers, but when they betray him, her gaze is heavy, like she remembers too.

Thankfully, once they reach his floor, there’s plenty of other things to occupy his mind. He leads Laurel into his apartment, flipping on the lights, the TV and the PS4 with the app on his phone. He pulls down the saucepan and fills it with enough water for two cups, flicking the burner on with his other hand. Once he sets the pan on the burner, he turns, taking a deep breath that the image in front of him immediately steals back.

She’s sitting at his kitchen island, and she looks like she might belong there.

“You don’t have a coffee maker?” Laurel asks idly, oblivious to his inner monologue.

“No,” he answers with a chuckle, pulling the white cloth cone from its spot in the top drawer. “I’m Puerto Rican. I have this.”

“What’s that?”

“This is a _colador_ ,” he says proudly, even though he understands that if she doesn’t know what it looks like, she won’t know what it’s called. “A coffee sock.”

“Coffee sock,” she deadpans. He just carries on, prying open the orange ceramic container and drops two heaping scoops through the handle, into the soft cone, draping it in the glass measuring bowl with the handle and pouring spout his grandmother got him on his first Christmas in his own place.

He’s never thought about the whole process that much. This is just how it’s done, how he’s made his coffee since he was tall enough to reach the stovetop and listen carefully to his Abuelita’s instructions. It’s almost unconscious for him, but it is private. He’s never even made coffee for anyone outside his own family. Maybe Barry, once or twice. Maybe.

“Gotta trust me on this one, Lance.”

That earns him a half smile and raised eyebrows that are almost teasing. “Well, I have so far.”

She lingers just a little too long on that, letting that smile and her words singe him around the edges, before she turns to take in her surroundings. “This is a really nice place, Cisco.”

“Not ‘coffee-maker nice’, but it’ll do,” he teases her, grinning with his tongue between his front teeth as he grabs the now-boiling saucepan and, with a practiced flick of the wrist, pours the hot water over the grounds and into the measuring bowl.

“I swear, I’ve engineered ways to rip a hole in the space-time continuum and then stitch it back up again,” he brags, resting the colador handle on the side of the bowl, leaving the coffee to steep and returning the saucepan to the stove to pour in the milk and sugar. “But I’ve never seen a machine that can make a better cup of coffee than that five-dollar piece of fabric.”

She’s hums softly as a response, still watching intently. He knows because he can feel her gaze on his back as he stirs, though all of his focus is on not scalding the milk…until it’s not. It’s the one time his mind jumps to Kendra all night – the coffee connection – and he’s surprised at how little emotion the memory evokes. That wound had been raw the last time they saw each other, but it’s healed faster than he expected. The stir in his chest at the mere thought of Laurel Lance however, that’s been with him for over a year now.

“Isn’t that just, a lot of dishes to dirty for one cup of coffee?” She pulls him from his reverie with a practical question, the easiest kind to answer.

“It’s _two_ cups,” he corrects, turning back to her just as the mixture in the saucepan starts to foam, so it has to be quick, though he can’t help raising a playful eyebrow. “And it’s worth it. You’ll see.”

He pours the steeped coffee back in with the milk, just to get it back up to a boil. It doesn’t take long before he’s ready to pour it into the mugs, but apparently, it’s enough time for a guilt spiral to start.

“I can’t believe I bailed,” he hears her sigh behind him as he waits for their cups to cool just slightly. There are so few things he can protect her from. “Just skipped town when shit hit the fan. That’s such an old-Ollie move.”

He’s smart enough to at least peripherally understand what that means, but the way her voice wavers when she says it tells him there are layers of definition and history he can’t even begin to know. So he tells her one thing he is certain of.

“Laurel, you didn’t run away.” He turns back to face her with a mug in each hand, and tries not to let his heart break at the look on her face. “You went looking for people you love, for comfort. It’s not your fault they weren’t there.”

The extra meaning isn’t really intentional, and he covers by finally sliding her coffee cup over to her. He gives her the best mug, the Star Wars one with Darth Vader in the Starbucks logo, and keeps the Pac-Man one with the cracked handle for himself.

The silence that follows isn’t awkward, exactly, but it’s fraught with some kind of tension. He definitely doesn’t watch her give the coffee an extra adorable blow to cool it further, doesn’t watch her cautious first sip, doesn’t ask his next question with an added layer of nuance.

“Worth it?”

Laurel smiles again, as she lowers the mug, and it’s close to the brilliant one he remembers. “Worth it.”

Excellent. “Wanna watch something?”

She does take a moment to consider. But not long. “Something light?”

“I’m in the middle of a Parks and Rec rewatch, that okay?” Cisco asks, rounding the island to cross to his couch.

“Sure.” It sounds like she’s not really listening, when she follows him, like she’s lost herself in thought again.

“This is not Netflix and chill, by the way,” he assures as they make their way to the living room. She could take either of the armchairs, but she sits down beside him on the couch, barely a foot of space between their bodies. He doesn’t mind at all.

“Netflix and chill?”

“It’s a euphe– you know what? Nevermind.”  Nothing good can come of his jumbled explanation, and his nerves would only be exacerbated by her proximity. “You know what Netflix is though, right?”

“Jeez, Cisco, I may have burned through my 20s in my late teens, but I’m not a hundred years old,” she laughs, with what he hopes is mostly mock-offense.

“I just wanted to make sure,” he covers. “It’s not like you’re staying home nights knitting or something.”

At least she’s still smiling. At least they both are. “Not so much, no.”

On TV, Amy Poehler is heaping a comical amount of whipped cream on her breakfast and for a split second, it feels like they’re normal people with mundane, ordinary lives.

“Ooh, waffles sound good.” Laurel breaks the silence after a few moments. “Almost as good as this coffee.”

“You want another?” When she shakes her head, he reaches out to grab her empty cup, and once again the brush of her fingers against his triggers a vision.

He must jolt, physically, because she reaches out with her other hand to steady his arm, setting both of their mugs down on the coffee table. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He’s just trying to catch his breath. “I uh, I had another vibe.”

“ _Another_?”

“I had one at the bar earlier,” he admits. Her face screws up, and Cisco realizes she doesn’t really know much of his powers, doesn’t know the kinds of things he’s seen.

“What, uh…what exactly are they?”

“Sometimes it’s the future,” he explains. “Sometimes, it’s an alternate timeline. Things that are going to happen, things that might happen, just flashes.”

They both know what the next question will be, but she looks like she’s afraid to ask it. “What did you see?”

He doesn't even think to lie to her. “All I saw was your smile.”

“What?” It’s more an exhaled breath than a question.

“Both times,” he tells her, leaving no doubt, watching the realization settle across her features. “It was sunny and you were smiling, and you looked…blissful. Blissful and beautiful and just, happy.”

Her face falls, dropping the hope from its expression, and he’s certain she’s remembering that not all of his visions are predictors. “Cisco, you have to stop saying things like that.”

“Why? It’s the truth.”

“It’s…a lot,” she answers, stumbling. “And it makes me overthink things. Things you don’t mean.”

Wait, _what_?

“Laurel, I told you I loved you the first time we met,” he scoffs. He doesn’t think either of them have moved an inch, but it feels like they’re closer on the couch all of a sudden. “What exactly is it you think I don’t mean?”

It might be a lot, but it’s just the truth.

She’s only stunned silent for a few seconds, but her eyes go wide and stay like that. “You didn’t tell me you loved me,” she tells him after moment, more quietly than he expects. “You told the Black Canary you loved her.”

He’s always the one to kiss her, it seems, but she never seems to mind.

Last time, he had needed her, pure and simple. This time, he needs to reassure her, needs a way to tell her without words, what she means to him. Last time, she had told him with confidence that Laurel Lance and the Black Canary were one in the same, and he needs her to understand what that means in terms of his heart.

She gasps when his lips brush hers, like she always does. He can say “always” now, about kissing her. They have an _always_ , and he wants to make it last forever.

There’s so much of her that’s hard lines and sharp angles, lean muscle built over bones of steel, but finding her soft spots is one of his absolute favorite things. The pillow of her lower lip that he can’t help but pull between his teeth, the silk of her hair, that pads of her fingers that brush against his face and tease up his scalp. His hands land on her hips, in a spot that allows his thumbs to brush the skin just under her shirt, and that’s soft, too.

He always forgets how tiny she is. It’s hard to notice because she carries herself around like a linebacker, but he can almost span her whole waist with his hands. A few nights from now, he’ll have a vivid dream about making her pastelón in his grandmother’s kitchen. But for the moment, she’s wrapping her arms around his neck and her tongue around his own, pulling him in tight.

He pulls back before she can though, all too early, but he needs to have one of these end on his terms.

“It’s late.” He rests his forehead against hers, taking deep breaths of her into his lungs for one last selfish moment. “You can stay the night if you want, the guest room’s all made up.”

“Guest room?” This time he’s pretty sure the reason she’s not hearing him is because all her attention is fixed on his lips, which he lets curl up at the corners. If he were a lesser man, if they weren’t grief-soaked and exhausted, he wouldn’t even bother with the guest room.

“You gotta stop letting me surprise you, Lance.” Finally, her eyes rise to meet his, and he sees the mirth he expected, along with a fair amount of heat that he files away. “And you gotta switch over to the private sector. Pay’s way better.”

She shakes her head on a smirk, so he tries again, more insistent.

“You should stay.” If he has to let her go, he doesn’t want to let her _go_. “You were planning on it, anyway. Just stay here instead.”

“Okay,” she nods, biting her bottom lip. He tries to ignore the way it’s already a little swollen, shuffles through his rational mind for something to distract himself.

“Good, hold on a sec.” He bolts down the hallway in a kind of daze, cracking the door to the guest room and switching on the lamp beside the perfectly-made bed. When he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the way out, he swears he looks different somehow. He moves next to his own room, grabbing his nicest sweats off the clean laundry pile, along with his favorite Google galaxy map t-shirt.

When he steps back into the hallway, she’s there too, waiting at the doorway of the guest room like something’s holding her back.

“Here, you can wear these if you want,” he says, handing her the clothes. “I just washed them, I promise.”

“Thank you, Cisco.” She’s gone soft again, but maybe she’s just tired. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome,” he tells her as he turns away, but it’s not quite over yet. He wonders if she feels it too, the potential energy buzzing between them. 

“You know, Laurel…” When he turns back, she hasn’t moved a muscle, like she’s waiting for him. “Being a hero doesn’t mean that you can’t ever want someone to be strong for you.”

This time, _finally_ , she kisses him first, grabbing his t-shirt by the collar and curling her fingers so they just brush against his chest. He steps in immediately, crowding her against the door frame, and while her hands are busy holding the clothes, he uses his to cup her face. He kisses her deep, aware that this time, like every time before it, might be his last.

When breathing becomes an imperative, she speaks first. “We have to stop doing this.” Her voice is raspy, and all he can think of is kissing her again.

She beats him to it, though, countering her own words with a few more pecks to his lips. He’s just barely clear-headed enough to remember that he owes her a response. “Doing what, exactly?”

“Making out when we’re heartbroken.” Saying it out loud seems to sober her a little, and he takes one step back to give her space. But his hand lifts, as if controlled by something other than his logical brain, and his fingers curl under her chin, tapping her gaze up to meet his.

“Okay,” he concedes with a nod, pressing one last, lingering kiss to her soft lips. “Next time, we won’t be heartbroken.”

She tilts her head and gives him a look like he’s managed to surprise her again. “Goodnight, Cisco.”

_“Dulces sueños, pajarita.”_

* * *

He’s not naive enough to think that it’s the coffee that keeps him up all night. Thankfully, Caitlin’s awake too, holding vigil in Star City and she keeps him company via text for a few hours, until the sun turns the sky pink. The silence outside his bedroom door gives him hope that Laurel at least got a few hours of sleep, and when the pink turns to red, and then orange, he gets up to make breakfast.

He kills another few episodes of Parks and Rec while he boils water and scrambles some eggs, pausing for a moment to imagine how his Abuelita would scold him for not cleaning out the colador before he went to bed. She’d be proud of him for being a gentleman, though, he thinks with a chuckle.

He’s staring out the window, thinking of his grandmother and hoping that it might be Central City’s first sunny day in over a week, when Laurel’s voice makes him jump.

“Good morning,” she says, grinning at his shock.

“Morning.” He smiles back and shrugs from his spot behind the island. “I wanted to make you waffles, but I…”

She interrupts him, nerves clearer in the morning light. “I should really hit the road.”

“Yeah, I figured. So, waffles next time.” He holds up the readied travel mug with a foil roll balanced on top. “Breakfast wrap and coffee to go.”

She rounds the island to take them, and her quick, grateful peck to his lips takes him by surprise, but when she pulls back, he sees something strangely familiar. Her face, it’s the same smile he saw in his vibe yesterday, simple, blissful, relieved. He swells with pride, lost for words, as she heads for the door.

“I really do like waffles,” she turns back to tell him. It’s almost a promise.

“Next time,” he reassures her, because he’s almost certain there will be one.

She just grins, as much as he can hope for, given what she’s readying herself to face. “Okay.”

“Call me later?” The question sounds strained, almost pleading, but the more he thinks of her heading back to the hospital, the more anxious he becomes. He wants to know when they’ll all be okay again. “To..uh, you know, update us all on Felicity.”

The name is what seems to sober her completely, pops what’s left of their little blissful bubble. “Of course,” she nods. “Bye, Cisco.”

The door doesn’t even close before he misses her. “Adios, pajarita.”


End file.
